Founded by Ian Merchant in 2007, Bristol-based Electronic label Black Acre Records has, from its humble seed, become a platform for a vast foilage of unique and progressive Electronic output. Building up a colourful roster, which includes soul-step wonderkid Alby Daniels, bubbling Garage/Dubstep extrodianaire Fantastic Mr Fox, sonic chameleon Blue Daisy and the deep’n’dark Memotone – the Black Acre mantra has always been “Genre? There is no genre”. And hence, with every new release Black Acre branches out into excitingly new and unchartered terrority, a credit to both the artists and Merchant’s ethos of absolute artistic freedom, keeping alot of Electronic labels lumbering behind. Right, enough tree puns, here’s our top five Black Acre Records releases of the year so far.
Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs – Tapes & Money (Alby Daniels Remix)
Now we should confess, this hasn’t actually been released officially by Black Acre. It appeared on Alby Daniels’ Soundcloud a few months ago as a free download, but we just couldn’t not share it.
Fantastic Mr Fox – Power
Following his 2012 San’en EP (featuring ample amounts of vocals from Alby Daniels), Mr Fox dropped this buoyantly spirited House anthem. It’s also out on limited edition psychedelic ‘splatter effect’ vinyl (damn cool) which you can cop here.
Blue Daisy x Unknown Shapes – Bedtime Stories
Collaborating with the mysterious Unknown Shapes, Blue Daisy released the epic six-track concept EP entitled Bedtime Stories last month. It comes packed with all the musical intricacies you’d expect from the Electronic mastermind, but doused in thick reverb to create the sleepy atmosphere to match track names like Beautiful Nightmare and Wet Dreams. Our favourite is Pillow Talk, feeling a lot like a BurialxJoker collab.
Black Acre presents: Rebuilds
A selection of remixes from SBTRKT, Boddika, Lukid and more dropped a few months back. It just reinforces how forward-thinking this label is, with so many different flavours. Here are two favourites of ours.
Romare – Meditations on Afrocentrism
Romare raised the bar and then smashed it to pieces with his Black Acre debut this year, Meditations on Afrocentrism. Scattered with tribalised Afrocentric samples, the whole four-track EP is rich and textured and unlike anything we’ve heard. Our favourite track, The Blues (It Began In Africa), combines an alluring flute sample and some serious footwork rhythm. It not only tops our list of Black Acre releases this year, but is in the running for our favourite track across any label and genre this year.
